I’ve got a photo that I need to change the resolution on. My photo editor is Photos (previously iPhoto) I’ve looked around, and I can’t change the resolution on there. It’s a very basic editor. Does anybody know of any free editors (or very cheap editors! 😀 ) that can change photo resolution? Thank you so much! 😀

When you say resolution, I assume you mean changing the amount of pixels in a photo (e.g. changing a 5184 x 3456 pixel image to 1500×1000). Photos—really a more powerful editor than it lets on to be (give Apple a win, as I don’t think Windows 10 has anything similar built-in)—actually has something to do this. I’m using macOS Sierra, but I’m pretty sure this is going to be the same all the way back into Yosemite and forward into Mojave.
Select the image(s) you want to downsize, and then click File —> Export > Export 1 Photo…. After that, you’ll get a little menu. You can set your photo kind (JPEG, PNG, or TIFF), quality, color profile, and size. You can use their “Large, Medium, Small” presets, or you can click “Custom.” I’d use the Max Dimension setting (it shows you what the particular setting is measuring for portrait or landscape orientation), and then set your maximum dimension in pixels. This resizes the image (and then you can post it here!). But you are right, you can’t change the actual “resolution” (pixels per inch) in Photos, I don’t believe. You can only resize it.

However, since you’re on a Mac, you can also do this in Preview; it actually gives you control over Resolution. Open your image in Preview. Then click Tools —> Adjust Size… from their, you select “custom” and then can adjust the width and length of the image in pixels, inches, centimeters, etc. and you can adjust the resolution (pixels per inch or pixels per centimeter).

Thank you @buddingphotographer and @loganlamar 😀 Especially for answering so quickly!! It looks like y’all have some awesome information, but my brain is feeling like it does when I’ve got a complicated math problem to figure out, so I think I’ve got to go do something fun before I come and figure out all this complicated techy stuff. 😀 Logan, I know SOME technical things, but I’m not sure that I’m extremely knowledgeable. My desktop is a Lenovo. Is that a mac?? 😀 And what is Preview??

If you can use iPhoto, you have a Mac, because I’m pretty sure it’s not available for PC users. Apple’s new program, Photos, replaced iPhoto back in late 2014. I suppose PC might also have a program called “Photos” (not the most original name in the world).

But it is sounding like you are on a PC… generally speaking, if you have a start menu in the lower left hand corner and no menu bar on top of your screen, you are on a Windows computer (which could be actually made by a number of companies like Dell, Microsoft, Acer, or Lenovo). If you have a menu bar on top (with a little apple with a bite in it in the upper left hand corner), then you are on a Mac. If you are browsing the internet with Internet Explorer or Edge, you are on a Windows Computer; if you browse with Safari, you are most certainly on a Mac (if you browse with Chrome, you could be on either).

@loganlamar What is preview? I was able to do all that you suggested for Photos and exporting and all that (neat – I’d never known all that! 😀 ) but I do want to change the resolution, not just the size. 😀

First of all, Photos is pre-loaded on Apple products. It is a middle-of-the road app. Good for what you may want (especially since it’s free) but its far short of what high-end editors use. On the other hand, Affinity Photo (for Apple or PCs) was developed in 2015, by a very large team of software and photo experts who were fed up with Photoshop’s lock on on the market. It earned Apple’s app of the year award with the first edition, which is pretty prestigious. Do a quick search and you will see it is rated equal to and in some cases better than the full Photoshop! And, what’s incredible is it is all for a one-time $49.99. Photoshop no longer sells their software outright. It is only available by monthly (very costly for you) subscription. Not sure what it is now. Surely, people are going to jump on what I said with a variety of comments for and against. But check it out on your own and see…be sure to get the advice of two or three other Apple users. By the way, Affinity isn’t the only photo editor, but it’s a favorite among Apple users.

In my experience Photos can edit quite well. I started learning how to edit on iPhoto then I got Photoshop Elements and I really like that, but for some things I almost think Photos is better for things such as adding contrast, definition, and brightness.

My editing process is usually play with the “Brilliance” and contrast to make the photo really “pop” then if I want to do any fancy editing with layers and stuff then I go to Photoshop, but for the majority of what I do Photos is great.

I have used Apple products all my life and Photos is way better than iPhoto but it’s way worse than Photoshop so it is really just what you want to do and how you want to edit.

For starters, I would recommend installing Darktable or RawTherapee (both are free). If you want more power over individual pixels and want layers (very useful for major cloning work), Affinity Photo would be a good one to try out. (for about 50$ USD). It takes a while to learn how to use them, but once you have learned these programmes they offer a plethora of tools and you will wonder how you ever did without!

@kina, I heartily and totally recommend Affinity for a Photoshop alternative (much, much more inexpensive!), I don’t know that I’d recommend Darktable or RawTherapee as a Lightroom alternative/Raw developer (complex and hard to use, in my opinion. I’d recommend Skylum’s Luminar, which is around $69 right now).
However, if you have a Mac, the simplest (and cheapest) way to change a photo’s resolution is probably with Preview (and it’s already on your computer). It’s the default application to open a JPEG file (or just about any image file) when you purchase your computer, but sometimes other applications will set the default to themselves.

If your image is sitting on your desktop or in a folder somewhere (not in Photos), fantastic. That makes it easy. To open an image with Preview from your desktop, you’ll want to hold down the control button on your keyboard and click once on the image file. You’ll get a little pop-up menu, and you’ll want to hover over “Open with” until it displays a list of applications. Preview, if it’s the default application, will show up at the top of that list. If it’s not the default, it’ll be in the list of applications.

If your image is in Apple Photos and you haven’t done any edits or cropping to it, you’ll want to “export the unmodified original” to your desktop. The easiest way to do this, I’ve found, is to hold down the option key and drag the image to your desktop. The other way to do it is to click File –> Export > Export Unmodified Original. You’ll get a pop-up menu (I think you could probably leave the IPTC as XMP unchecked (I think it stores any edits in that XMP file so you can open it up in something like Lightroom, but I’m not sure)).

If your image is in Apple Photos and you have done some editing to it, you’ll want to click File –> Export > Export Photo. In the pop-up menu, make sure you set the JPEG quality to Maximum and the size to Full size (as you’ll be resizing the image in Preview).

What you don’t really want to do is just drag the image out of Photos onto your desktop. This, by default, downsizes the photo, and you want to do all of your downsizing all at once in Preview.

After you’ve exported the image out of Photos, find where you saved it, and then go ahead and resize and change the resolution with Preview as described earlier.

I hope this helps out and isn’t too confusing! Good luck with changing the resolution!

@loganlamar Wow, thank you for taking your time to tell me all that!! I’m saving up to get a photo editor – Skylum’s Luminar looks really neat. I may possibly get that one. Perhaps you already said this, but can you change the photo resolution on there?

Not in Luminar, no. However, Affinity Photo—while not a dedicated RAW editor like Luminar and Lightroom (it’s a different tool)—does allow you to change the image resolution.

Just note that Luminar and Affinty aren’t the same tool. Luminar is the tool for editing RAWs or JPEGs and doing basic cropping and clone stamping (like a souped up version of Apple Photos, which you’re familiar with, without the photo sorting option), but if you want to do some heavy editing (like replacing someone’s head in a family photo), you’ll be wanting something like Affinity or Photoshop (or GIMP, which is clunky but powerful and free). There is some overlap between the two programs, but each really shines in a different arena.